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Gomez begins Senate bid

By Matt Murphy, State House News Service

Updated:
03/01/2013 08:29:45 AM EST

QUINCY -- Gabriel Gomez officially launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate on Thursday, describing himself as a "new kind of Republican" interested in breaking the partisan divide in Washington and reining in government spending.

"The simple fact is that if we are going to preserve the American dream for future generations, we have to get our government spending under control, and focus on our economy," Gomez, a Cohasset resident, told family, friends and a few dozen supporters at the American Legion in Quincy.

Gomez, making his first public appearance since gathering enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, planned stops in Shrewsbury and Springfield on Thursday as well to speak to voters.

His remarks focused heavily on his upbringing as the son of Colombian immigrants, his experience as a Navy SEAL and his education and professional career.

He spoke at first in Spanish, which he described as a "habit," noting he learned Spanish before English after his parents emigrated from Colombia the year before he was born and that he grew up in Yakima, Washington.

Now an investment manager at Boston-based Advent International, Gomez said he has spent a considerable amount of time in the private sector investing and growing retirement funds for public employees. Criticizing the "bloated" federal government for operating without a budget, and overextending itself to create a $16 trillion deficit, Gomez said, "I would never invest pension funds for Massachusetts public employees in a company like that.

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With automatic spending cuts that could harm the state's economy set to go into effect Friday absent a deal between Congress and the White House, Gomez called for members of the House, Senate and president to forgo their own paychecks until a deal on sequestration is reached.

He said Congress agreed to new revenues President Obama was seeking in January when payroll taxes were allowed to increase and upper-income earners saw a tax increase, and now is the time to focus on reducing federal spending in a responsible way and not seeking another "balanced" approach as Democrats suggested.

Gomez, 47, distanced himself from liberal, conservative or moderate labels, at one point declaring, "No soy un politico" and at another saying, "I don't know all the political lingo -- and I don't want to know all the political lingo." He said instead that he was a "Navy man."

Gomez told reporters he is Catholic and personally pro-life, but not interested in overturning Roe v. Wade.

"Now, this is a very contentious issue, I understand that. And I'm not going down to D.C. to change the law," he said.

Gomez also said immigration reform should include a path to citizenship that is neither "easy" nor "impossible" and expressed support for gay marriage.

"I believe if people are in love, they should be able to get married," he said.

In highlighting his Colombian heritage, Gomez's candidacy could appeal to a growing voter bloc in Massachusetts of Hispanic citizens at a time when national Republicans have acknowledged a failure to make inroads into immigrant communities while Democrats have benefitted from the influx of new Americans.

In November after the election, state Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh said the minority vote helped propel Democrats to victory, crediting the efforts made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren's campaign to reach out to those communities and a "remarkable core of elected officials from communities of color who have turned into a force."

Appearing nervous during his first political speech, Gomez also called for a ban on members of Congress from leaving public office to become lobbyists, and said he supports term limits for members of Congress. When asked whether he planned to limit his own service in the Senate, if elected, Gomez initially did not directly answer the question, but an aide later said he would not run for more than two terms in the Senate.

Gomez arrived in Quincy with his wife Sarah and their four children, joking that they had to leave their two dogs at home. His oldest daughter Olivia introduced him.

Former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey showed up to support Gomez, as well as supporters and a few undecided voters interested in hearing Gomez speak for the first time. Healey said she welcomed a competitive Republican primary, and has a lot of respect for the other two candidates in the race, including former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan and state Rep. Daniel Winslow, who served in the Romney administration as chief counsel with Healey.

Winslow and Sullivan announced this week they had gathered the signatures to qualify for the ballot, and are more well-known to Republican voters and elected officials who have worked with them in politics over the years.

"We need to welcome candidates like Gabriel Gomez into the mix, and we need to support them and give them encouragement to get out there and personally I'm hoping Gabriel does very well," Healey said.

Healey said she would let Gomez describe his stance on issues, particularly those more controversial like abortion that Democrat Reps. Stephen Lynch and Edward Markey have quarreled over as they seek to win over women voters. But Healey said Gomez would be an attractive candidate to many Massachusetts women.

"I believe that he is the future of our party. We need people like Gabriel who can restore the party identity with their vision of opportunity in America, their vision and genuine belief in the American dream, and their understanding that that's predicated on education, service and a strong economy," Healey said.

Gomez, according to the Boston Globe, sought the interim Senate appointment from Gov. Deval Patrick last month that went to the governor's former chief of staff Mo Cowan, hoping to touch a bipartisan nerve in the governor with his request.

The Gomez campaign also announced endorsements Thursday from Republican State Committee members Brent Andersen and Mindy McKenzie-Hebert, from Worcester's 2nd State Senate District.

Though Gomez went into more detail on his policy positions with reporters after the event, he missed a chance to stake out some ground on the issues in his remarks as he seeks to win over voters who don't yet know him.

"I'm looking forward to him taking some good positions. I didn't hear that today, so it's still a tough decision to make," said Quincy Republican City Committee member Norman Tuttle, an undecided GOP voter.

But for others, just hearing Gomez talk about being an outsider frustrated by partisan bickering was enough.

Anthony Paress, a combat search and rescue swimmer with the Navy, said of Gomez, "It would be nice to see someone who wasn't an insider get in, but we'll see what happens."

One supporter held up a sign that read "Seal the Deal with Gomez," but declined to give his name because he said he was a member of a local chapter of the AFL-CIO that had endorsed Lynch for Senate.

Sean Cooper, of Charlestown, said he was attracted to Gomez because of his business experience, and said anyone who got through Harvard Business School had to be "gifted" with finance.

"If we can get him in there instead of a career politician, I think it would make a positive influence on the debt and the bloated spending. He'd be extremely helpful now if he was a senator with the sequester problem. We need more finance people if we're going to solve the debt issue," Cooper said.

Though Cooper was already excited by Gomez's candidacy, he dragged his friend Joe Boike, from Arlington, to the Quincy event to hear Gomez.

"I thought he was impressive. He seemed a little nervous, but my biggest thing is he's not a politician," Boike said.

The three-way primary is scheduled for April 30, with the Republican nominee slated to go up against the winner of the Democratic primary contest between Congressmen Edward Markey and Stephen Lynch. The Lynch campaign on Thursday was mourning the loss of its attorney and Lynch's close friend William McDermott, who was struck and killed by Range Rover in South Boston Wednesday evening.

Walsh, on a conference call with reporters, accused Congressional Republicans of continuing "their strategy of obstinance and intransigence" by refusing to seek a balanced approach to sequestration with Obama, and said he was concerned the three Republicans in the race were "intent to run as independent problem solvers absent any discussion of issues."

Asked specifically about Gomez, Walsh called the Republican's depiction of himself as an outsider and calls for term-limits "fluffy" and "esoteric."

Walsh said Sullivan, Winslow and Gomez are all "more qualified than Scott Brown was in 2010," but said Democrats would be successful if they forced the men to discuss their positions. "The reason that slipped away is because we didn't force a discussion on the issues," Walsh said.

He credited Winslow with being specific in his calls to cut Social Security and Medicaid, and said Gomez and Sullivan "better get specific very quickly" if they think the solution is only to cut federal spending without asking the wealthiest to pay more in taxes.

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